Hawthorn will win back-to-back premierships

OK, not exactly going out on a limb here, predicting the best team in the competition to win the flag. But the Hawks will have to defy a bit of history to do so: only one Hawthorn team has managed the feat – the near-incomparable 1988-89 side – and it hasn’t been achieved at all since Brisbane went back-to-back-to-back in 2003. Besides, there’s no shortage of opinion saying Fremantle are primed to go one better than last year and Sydney can return to the summit with Lance Franklin alongside Kurt Tippett in a super-charged Swans forward line.

The Hawks showed last year they can ably cope without Buddy; heck, they might even be a better team with him. Hawthorn have wannabes snapping at their heels and it won’t be a stroll, but they’re the clear benchmark and will win the 2014 premiership.

Nathan Fyfe and Patrick Dangerfield will be joint winners of the Brownlow medal

Really had to rub the crystal ball hard for this one, but I’ll be expecting an honorary mention even if I’m only half right. If they haven’t done so already, both players are poised to take the competition by the scruff of the neck in 2014. Both elite midfielders (a prerequisite these days if you want to take Charlie home), Fyfe and Dangerfield have other key factors in their favour as they move into their prime years: umpires have shown a distinct liking for them, and there is no over-abundance of vote-stealers among their team-mates.

Fyfe finished 15th in 2012, despite playing only eight games, and last year was the leading Docker on 18 votes. Dangerfield finished seventh inthe breakthrough season in 2012 saw him finish seventh in the Brownlow count, but, ominously, he improved on that last year to come fifth despite Adelaide missing the finals. Dangerfield’s Crows might not win as many games as the Dockers in 2014, but he has a history of attracting votes in losing games. Barring injuries, expect one of them – maybe both – to be drinking champers with Bruce McAvaney on this year’s night of nights.

Collingwood will miss the top eight

The Pies haven’t sat out September since their annus horribilis in 2005, but there’s reason enough to suggest they’ll be flat out making the eight in 2014. The signs weren’t particularly good last year: despite his best players Dane Swan, Scott Pendlebury and Travis Cloke enjoying arguably their best seasons, coach Nathan Buckley could engineer no better than a solitary finals appearance that resulted in a comprehensive defeat by Port Adelaide. The departures of Dale Thomas and Heath Shaw won’t benefit Collingwood, while Alan Didak and Darren Jolly are also no longer. The Mapgpies aren’t exactly rebuilding, but Buckley gave starts to 40 players last year, several of them first-year men that will continue their education this year. Throw in a tough start to the campaign – their first four games are all against fellow 2013 finalists – and the fact they close the regular season against Hawthorn (whom they face twice in 2014), and it all adds up to a rare early finish for the black-and-white.

Goal review system to cause more angst

Fans hate it, players and coaches don’t understand it: the sketchy goal review system remains the one facet of an otherwise professional set-up that makes the AFL look amateurish. Barely a round went by in 2013 without a controversial goal ruling making more headlines that the match itself. The system is relying on inconclusive evidence to rule, or overrule, on decisions made, and the upshot is goal umpires are starting to second guess themselves. Essendon’s Brendon Goddard summed it up with this tweet last year: “The goal review is a debacle … the umpire went to signal touched and changed his mind.” The AFL is trying, having trialled Hawk-Eye and installing additional fixed cameras at grounds, but until goal-line video technology is implemented, the review system will continue to frustrate participants and observers alike.

Greater Western Sydney will not finish bottom

Slotting the Giants in at the rear has become a first move for fans and pundits as they pen their ladder predictions for the season ahead. And fair enough, GWS haven’t given us reason to reckon otherwise with two last-place finishes in two years in the competition. They’re most onlookers’ idea of the wooden spooners for 2014, but they can’t dwell in the cellar forever – and this is the season they’ll emerge. The club’s battalion of greenhorns are another year older, and bigger, with the likes of Jeremy Cameron, Callan Ward and Tom Scully now entrenched as bona-fide AFL players. What the Giants have always lacked is muscle and experience. That’s been addressed this year thanks to the recruitment of Shane Mumford, Heath Shaw, Jed Lamb, Dylan Addison and Josh Hunt. With the young, energetic Leon Cameron taking over as coach from Kevin Sheedy, expect noted improvement from GWS. They’ll finish nearer last than first this year, but the wooden spoon won’t be theirs. St Kilda will pick that up.

New chief executive to announce sweeping changes

With this season to be Andrew Demetriou’s 11th and last one as AFL boss, at some stage in 2014 his successor will be announced. Any new regime brings with it a new broom, and it’s certain the new figurehead at the AFL will look to immediately stamp his/her mark – even if it is to be Demetriou’s 2IC Gillon McLachlan. Expect a new take to be applied to some of the burning issues in the game. At some stage under its new management, expect AFL to be played on Good Friday – and for the first night Grand Final to be announced. Off the field, there’s no doubt the new chief executive will address the AFL’s position on the regulation of sports science (an area Demetriou’s AFL got so wrong with regards to Essendon), performance-enhancing and illicit drugs and the growing inequity between the haves and have-not clubs.